


innocence

by ten_and_a_rose



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 20:12:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6438592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ten_and_a_rose/pseuds/ten_and_a_rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Innocence: “not corrupted or tainted with evil or unpleasant emotion; sinless; pure.”</i>
</p><p>For the <a href="timepetalsprompts.tumblr.com">timepetals</a> prompt: "innocent."</p>
            </blockquote>





	innocence

**Author's Note:**

> A HUGE **THANK YOU** to [Caedmon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Caedmon/pseuds/Caedmon) for the beta!!  
>  As usual, all I own are the mistakes...

He knew when his own innocence had been lost.  It had been predestined, calculated and cold.  Still an infant in the life of a Time Lord, he’d been taken to the Untempered Schism and forced to gaze into the maelstrom of infinity itself.  Like many other children he bolted, screaming, but the damage had been done.  It stormed his mind like an invading horde and did violence there, weaving the massive uncensored horrors of the universe into his very existence in a way that could never be undone.  (And it was worse for him, of course – he was _different_.)

It had changed him forever.  Even though he rebelled against his people at every turn, it was never enough to outrun the past.

Then the Time War came and destroyed whatever of himself he had left.

Or so he’d thought.

Then he’d taken her hand.   _Her_ hand.

Rose Tyler was not innocent in the usual sense of the word, certainly.  He’d seen that from the start.  She’d grown up quickly in the Powell Estate, the child of a single mother in a “rough neighbourhood” who learned the harshness of the world too much and too soon.

And yet, beneath dyed-blonde hair and lower-class accent, hoodies and jeans and attitude, there was... _light_.  He saw it shining from her eyes, and it was so brilliantly alive that he couldn’t let it go.  They’d just met and already he knew he needed her with him, and he asked her _twice_.  He _never_ asked twice.  She ran through the Tardis’ open doors and he felt a shift in the fabric of reality.

He began to cling more and more tightly to what he saw when he looked at her.  Somehow there was an innocence built into her nature, forgiveness and compassion and unconditional love given freely with a smile or a single gentle touch.

The first time she turned it on him fully, it was enough to resurrect him from the living dead.

When he sent her away in the Tardis to keep her from dying with him, she came back instead ten thousand fold, crackling and glowing with the fire of all of time and space.  She could have had anything, done anything, but all she desired was to save him, save him and upright the universe from what should not have been.

He saved her in turn, saved her from burning alive with what her humanity could not contain.  But it meant he changed, and he feared it would take her from him.  He could not comprehend it.  She stayed.

Because still, Rose Tyler was innocent.

She faced down werewolves, endured his callous idiocy over former companions and French courtesans, defeated Cybermen and lost her childhood friend.  She survived Krop Tor, sending the Beast into the blackness of space.

She grieved and she hurt and she lost.  And she forgave him.  Loved him.  Somehow, somehow, she loved him and her brilliance shone more brightly than ever before.

And still she was innocent.

When he slipped the chain round her neck and sent her to Pete’s World, she simply slammed her hands down on the big yellow button and brought herself back to him again, trembling but with a set to her jaw that dared him to defy her.  She refused to leave him, and it made him finally begin to grasp the depth of her devotion.  It thrilled and terrified him in equal measure, but there and then he knew he could _never_ let her go.

With the slip of a finger, he lost her anyway.  And it was selfish, the need to see her that one last time, yet he did it, burning up a sun.  He saw her anguish reflecting his own and he’d never been so afraid, for her and for himself.  He’d been foolish to think he could keep her, but this was a cruelty that spanned two universes.

He’d never willingly be the thing that snuffed out her innocence.

He was barely existing until Donna said the words “Bad Wolf.”  Fear and joy warred within him – _Rose is coming back; isn’t that good?_

Then she was there, carrying a gun and a smile for him like a thousand suns.  Carrying a gun.

A gun.

Yet innocent, still.

But now, in this moment...

Standing on the sand, here back at Bad Wolf Bay, he finally, finally grasps that he is the one person who holds her heart in his hands.  He never even got the chance to speak to her properly, alone.  An aching fracture wells up in his chest and he knows it will never heal.

She’s standing him down, calling him out, and she has every right.  He hears “worst day of my life” and he’s breaking more and more and it’s getting harder to breathe even as he knows what he has to say.  He can’t be foolish.  He thinks she isn’t his to keep; not now.

He holds himself together long enough to push the words out.  “Does it need saying?”

Though it’s only for a fraction of a second, he sees the disbelief and the blow he’s dealt her, the hurt he’s caused.  He’s amazed his legs still keep him standing as she turns to the man on her other side.  The man who is also him.

The man she belongs with, he thinks.  The man she deserves.  The man who can give her all of himself.

She kisses him, this other man, and he’s fiercely battling back tears as he turns around, unwilling, _unable_ to look back.  He understands exactly what that other him is feeling, what he’s thinking.  That man can give her everything.

If only he can salvage her innocence.


End file.
